This paper
addresses the use of British resettlement village model during the Malayan
Emergency, the First Indochina War, and early American involvement in
Vietnam.In the end, this paper
concludes that the British resettlement village helped to defeat the communist
guerrillas in Malaya, while circumstances unique to Vietnam ensured its failure
in Vietnam. This paper will begin with an overview of the Malayan Emergency and
then focuses on the use of village resettlement in Vietnam during the 1950s and
early 1960s.

The Malayan
Emergency began in 1948, and is best described as a military and political
campaign fought by the British and the Malayan Federation government against
the ethnic Chinese-led Malayan Communist Party (MCP), which led the guerillas
and numbered only a few thousand.According to British officials, the guerrillas existed primarily by
“extorting supplies, money, food, and information from Malayans living without
protection on the jungle fringes.”[1]

On
16 June 1948, communist guerrillas attacked and brutally murdered five people,
including three Europeans.Normally,
English-speaking people were indifferent to the killing of Chinese and had
grown accustomed to the violence and mayhem over the previous months.However, the killing of the three Europeans
caused an uproar.Plantation owners
began immediately to pressure the British-led government to take action; thus a
state of emergency was declared in Perak and Johore.On 18 June 1948, the government extended the Emergency to the
whole Malayan Federation, and then to Singapore the following month.

From the onset of the emergency, the MCP achieved
military success, as well as popular support from the displaced Chinese in
Malaya's rural areas.Because they
illegally inhabited tracts of land in the countryside, the displaced Chinese
were popularly known as “squatters.”At
the beginning of the Emergency, approximately 500,000 people comprised the
squatter population.From the very
beginning, most people had viewed the emergency as a problem with the Chinese.[2]After all, ninety-five percent of the
communist guerrillas were from the squatter settlements.[3]

The
British reasoned that the Emergency could not be won solely through military
operations; civic action measures had to be integrated in the overall
plan.The British had to address the
squatter problem.Essentially, the
Emergency became “a struggle to determine which side should govern and dominate
the Chinese squatters.”[4]

The squatters who most interested the British were
those who dwelled outside the normal boundaries of government administration
and were at the mercy of the communist guerrillas.In order to combat the problem, the British planned to resettle
the squatters in “new villages.”

Aside from
the squatters, the government also found it necessary to concentrate laborers
from rubber plantations and tin mines into resettlement villages.The British first drafted the resettlement
plans in 1949, but did not have tangible results until 1950, after the
initiation of the Briggs' Plan.By the
end of June 1952, the government had brought approximately 470,000 people under
government control, of which eighty-five percent were Chinese.Overall, between 1950 and 1960, the British
relocated some 530,000 people into new villages.

During the Malayan Emergency, Chinese contractors
provided much of the work in the new villages, while the Royal Army Service
Corps often provided transport for removing the squatters.“The police, army, and civil administration
gave much assistance outside their normal duties.”[5]When initially created, a resettlement
village relied on regular armed forces for its defense, such as army, civil
guard, and self-defense corps from the district.After a new village had been reasonably secured, it no longer
needed regular armed forces for security.From this point, the village relied on village self-defense forces and
district police for its protection.

Along
with the military aspects, the Malayan Emergency also had important political
connotations.After World War II,
Britain began to relinquish its colonies. Britain partitioned Pakistan and
India and each nation achieved independence.Likewise, besides defeating the communists, the British-led government
also wanted unification and independence in Malaya.By advocating Malayan independence, the British countered
communist propaganda to the effect that Britain had renewed imperialist
intentions in Malaya.However, the
British-led government had to overcome the racial and ethnic diversity in the
country.Aside from the British, the
ethnic Malays constituted the dominant political power in Malaya, but the
Chinese comprised a substantial part of the population.Therefore, they had to be integrated into
Malayan politics.

Because of the Chinese squatter problem and
constitutional changes that were taking place in Malaya, the government
regarded Chinese support as essential to help end the Emergency and to
establish an independent Malaya.After
the start of the Emergency, Chinese and English-educated Chinese united and
formed the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA).“The leaders of both groups were mainly business men involved in tin,
rubber, and trade, and they had much to lose should the communists win the
jungle war.”[6]The English-educated Chinese convinced the British
and Malayans that they were committed to the cause and shared many of their
same political goals.The
Chinese-educated leaders won significant support from the Chinese community,
which demonstrated that the MCA was a legitimate Chinese political party.[7]The MCA helped thousands of Chinese become
citizens, which allowed them to participate in the political process.The MCA also provided money to the Chinese
who had been resettled in the new villages.During the progress toward independence, the MCA worked closely with the
United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Indian Congress
(MIC).The MCA and the UMNO represented
the largest populations in Malaya and with the assistance of the Reid Constitution
Commission, which was formed in 1956 to create a new constitution, expedited
the movement toward independence.[8]By February 1957, the interested parties had
completed work on the constitution and submitted it to the British government
for review.On 15 August 1957, The
Federal Council finally approved the constitution and Malaya achieved
independence on 31 August 1957; however, the fight against communists continued
until July 1960.

At
the time of the Malayan Emergency, the French battled guerrilla forces in
Vietnam and also tried to initiate a resettlement program.In 1952, French General Francois Gonzales
Linares headed the construction of “protected villages,” which the French later
named agrovilles.By constructing
quasi-urban amenities, the French designed the agrovilles to attract peasants
away from their normal hardships.This
policy is known as "pacification by prosperity."[9]
In addition to offering social and economic advantages, the French also secured
the villages and encouraged villagers to develop their own militias, which the
French trained and armed.Unlike the
British who implemented their program throughout Malaya, the French
concentrated their efforts in North Vietnam, particularly in the Red River
Delta.“Pacification by Prosperity” had
some success, but it was never decisive, because the peasant settlers felt
insecure, “a feeling which the numerous French guard posts along the perimeter
could do little to dispel so long as the [Viet Minh] operated at night,
anonymously, and held all village authorities in the same state of dread as
ever.”[10]

Between 1952 and 1954, French officials transplanted
approximately 3 million Vietnamese into agrovilles, but funding for the
agrovilles was high.In order to help
offset the cost, the French relied partially on American financial support,
which was "one of the earliest objects of American aid to France after the
outbreak of the Korean War."According to a private Vietnamese source, the U.S. spent about
"200,000 dollars on the 'show' agroville at Dong Quan."[11]After
visiting the villages of Khoi Loc in Quang Yen Province and Dong Quan in Ha
Dong Province, noted Vietnam War correspondent Bernard Fall stated that,
"the French strategic hamlets resembled British [Malayan] prototypes line
for line."[12]However, the British clashed with a smaller
hostile force in Malaya, 300,000 government troops against 8,000 communist
guerrillas, while the Viet Minh outnumbered the French 500,000 to 380,000.Further, the Viet Minh “possessed the
mortars and recoilless cannon[s] necessary to breach even sophisticated
defensive positions.”[13]In Malaya, squatters were not only
resettled, “but in most cases completely removed from the communist
[guerrillas] zone of influence; since the squatters represented less than six
percent of the population and made almost no contribution to the economic life
of the country, this was feasible.”[14]
Also, in contrast to the British, the French were reluctant to grant Vietnam
its independence, or allow the Vietnamese a voice in government affairs;
therefore, the French agroville program had little effect.

In
February of 1959, Ngo Dinh Diem made his first attempt of resettlement.Diem put forth a plan to develop centers of
agglomeration.The Government of
Vietnam (GVN) developed two types of centers of agglomeration.The first type, qui khu, relocated
Viet Cong [15] (VC)
families, people with relatives in North Vietnam, or people who had been
associated with the Viet Minh into new villages; thus, providing easier
government surveillance. The second type of relocation center, qui ap,
relocated families that supported the South Vietnamese government into new
villages that lived outside the realm of government protection and were
susceptible to Viet Cong attacks.The
primary of goal of the centers was to concentrate the villagers, so they were
not able to provide aid, comfort, and information to the Viet Cong.

Major Pham
Ngoc Thao, a primary architect of the Diem agroville program at the Directorate
General of Reconstruction, said "the agglomeration center plan had its
origins in the Ministry of the Interior [and was] designed to improve security,
[but] was crude, unsophisticated, and essentially military, [it] almost wholly
ignored the economic and social implications of relocation."[16]

Major Thao wrote a report about the public's
widespread dissatisfaction with the program and presented it to Diem.In his report, he expressed his concerns
about the disregard of economic and social aspects.Moreover, he reported that many highly placed Vietnamese families
asserted their discontent, because they had been relocated solely on the basis
of their relatives living in the North.Thao also reported that he, as well as other highly placed South
Vietnamese officials, had relatives in the North, yet they were loyal to the
South Vietnamese government.Major Thao
believed that, by separating and grouping the people by political affiliation,
Viet Cong supporters accumulated more hatred towards the government, and those
who supported the South Vietnamese government became less sympathetic toward
Diem.[17]Major Thao proposed integrating the two
groups, so that those loyal to the South Vietnamese government might be able to
help proselytize Viet Cong sympathizers.However, it has been reported that Major Thao was in fact a Viet Cong
agent; thus, by having the two groups integrated, it would have been possible
for the Viet Cong sympathizers to proselytize those loyal to Diem.[18]Nevertheless, based partly on Major Thao's
report, the South Vietnamese government developed plans for a new program that
began in the latter part of 1959.

The
construction of concentrated and fortified villages in Vietnam was not a new
concept.People along the coastal
plains and central Vietnam had been living in interdependent fortified villages
for centuries.Diem had grown up in
Central Vietnam and was a firm believer in close-knit communal
relationships.Diem thought that the
insurgency problem in the South resulted from hamlets being scattered and
stretched out along waterways with relatively little contact between them.Therefore, Diem reasoned, by relocating
villagers into "closer settlement areas," southern villages would be
more attuned to national tradition and would provide a better defense against
the Viet Cong.The GVN called the
resettlement areas agrovilles; a term coined from the French resettlement
villages.The plan also anticipated
that the agrovilles would have schools, medical and social services, and
electricity to entice the peasants.However, the government planned to use corvée labor to implement these
community projects.

Diem made the
decision to use corvée labor and “directed that the community development
principle (cong dong phat trien)…be employed for agroville labor.”[19]
Because Diem made the decision, there was no discretion at the lower
administrative levels.Diem reasoned
that, “the government was fully justified in requiring this kind of work from
the inhabitants without pay, especially since peasants paid few taxes and
received the benefits of the government which included agricultural credit,
land distribution, and police protection.”[20]Diem reasoned further that the peasants had
the time to labor between planting and harvesting of rice crops and were
fervent about the agroville program.Diem suggested that “whatever discomfort might be incurred along the way
would, he felt, [would] fade into insignificance when the final result was
produced.[21]Proponents of corvée labor reasoned that it
was too expensive to pay laborers in an underdeveloped country, because the
payments would create a strain on the national budget.On the other hand, opponents suggested that,
because the agrovilles were built in areas where the Viet Cong presence was
strong and communist activities were dependent on the local population, the
Viet Cong could exploit the use of corvée labor and garner further support from
the population.

By 1959,Diem had visited Kuala Lumpur and was aware
of Britain's success in combating guerrillas by relocating squatters into new
villages.That same year, the South
Vietnamese government estimated the number of Viet Cong guerrillas to be
somewhere between 5,000 and 12,000, a small percentage of the population, but
they were successful nonetheless.Diem
hoped that an army of 150,000, with the aid of additional security forces, could
attack and defeat the guerrillas, just as the British had done.However, Diem's forces had to locate the
guerillas and sever their contact with rural Vietnamese.

Very
little information exists about the overall scope of the agroville program, but
officials involved with the project estimated that the government anticipated
placing approximately half a million people into about 80 central agrovilles
between 1960 and 1963[22] Although
the agroville program seemed promising, many peasants did not like being
resettled and forced to provide corvée labor.Because of resettlement, many peasants had to walk greater distances to
their fields, which resulted in less work time; and workers were not
compensated for their time lost serving as corvée laborers.In all, the agroville program meant less
income for an already poor peasant population.

On
26 September 1960 United States Ambassador Elbridge Dubrow commented to Diem
that, "On the basis of our reports, it is questionable whether the known
hostility to the program, because of corvée labor and other reasons, has been
overcome in a short time."[23]
Ambassador Dubrow also told Diem that he should subsidize the inhabitants in
the agrovilles because this practice had been successful in the high
plateaus.Diem responded, "the
agroville program is different than that of the High Plateau, since the
peasants retain their paddy lands near the agroville, which gives them the same
income as previously."[24]
Ambassador Dubrow responded to Diem, "...nevertheless, we had heard of
reports that some of the peasants are not too satisfied with the agroville
program, because they had been displaced from their original homes and would
not receive any additional income for a considerable time."[25]Ambassador Dubrow then asked Diem how many
agrovilles he planned to build, and Diem said about 20.Diem added that, “with the completion of
these agrovilles he would discontinue the program for some time since, as
advantageous as the program is, it has cost the government a great deal of
money."[26] However,
Dubrow questioned whether money was the real issue.Ambassador Dubrow reported to Washington that, “perhaps[Diem] has finally been convinced by all and
sundry who have told him of the disgruntlement caused by the program that the
‘real cost' is loss of popular support for his regime.”[27]

According to
Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, the significance of the program, a program, that
he later declared he had not approved of, demonstrated that corvée labor could
still be imposed on the peasants by the government and Viet Cong. [28]
The abandonment of the agroville paved the way for the development of the
strategic hamlet program, a program Nhu supervised.

In
1961, during the early stages of the strategic hamlet program, some local
authorities emulated the successful village defense systems employed against
the Viet Minh in Bui Chu and Phat Diem in North Vietnam, during the First
Indochina War.These experimental
defense villages proved effective against guerilla activities and prompted the
South Vietnamese government to implement this strategy nation-wide.

Ngo
Dinh Nhu commanded the plan to implement a nation-wide strategic hamlet
program, which he developed from many sources.Nhu used ideas from Vietnamese self-defense villages, British new
villages in Malaya, and the Israeli kibbutz defense system.[29]Nhu's primary objective was to create a
strategic hamlet defense system in which the villagers organized themselves to
fight the Viet Cong, via "people's guerrilla tactics."[30]Nhu was adamant that the people take
personal responsibility in developing the strategic hamlet program.Thus, the villagers had to provide funds and
the labor to build the strategic hamlets, as well as people for self-defense
forces.

Although Nhu used
several examples to develop the strategic hamlet program, the British
experience in Malaya played the central role.The South Vietnamese government enlisted the help of British advisors
with experience in Malaya, chiefly Sir Robert Thompson, who had served as the
defense minister, and had been one of the chief architects of the
counter-insurgency plan in Malaya.Although the British offered practical experience to help remedy the
situation in South Vietnam, American officials, at that time, believed that
British involvement was not essential and could be detrimental to the United
States' status in South Vietnam.Ambassador Dubrow clearly opposed British involvement.He recognized Britain's success in Malaya
against the communist guerrillas and said that the British campaign offered
“much that is useful and pertinent in the guerrilla war with the Viet Cong,
[but] this has already been studied and incorporated where applicable in MAAG
[Military Assistance Advisory Group] training and operational doctrine.”[31]
Dubrow believed that, although MAAG solicited and continued efforts to develop
additional anti-guerrilla doctrine for Vietnam, “detailed application of this
doctrine to counter-guerilla training can more appropriately be made by
qualified and experienced personnel now in MAAG, than by introducing British or
Malayans at this fairly late stage into [the] training program.”[32]
He recognized that the Malayan campaign was different from the guerrilla war in
Vietnam, because the British Colonial Administration, with almost absolute
power, led the fight to a great extent with foreign officers and troops.In Vietnam, the situation was significantly
different, because the GVN and U.S. relied on ARVN troops.He reasoned that it would be “less confusing
and more efficient, if the advisory role and operations [were] retained by
[the] presently accredited country, U.S., and not divided unnecessarily with
[the] British [or] anyone else.”[33]
He was convinced that, “[the] introduction of other foreign advisors would be
psychologically detrimental to U.S. prestige in Vietnam and could well be
counter-productive by retarding rather than hastening training of [Vietnamese]
armed forces.” [34] Also, he
assumed that the introduction of the British military would create problems
regarding the Geneva Accords, because the British were members of the
International Control Commission (ICC) for Vietnam.Despite the U.S opposition to British involvement, Sir Robert
Thompson and the British Advisory Mission (BRIAM) arrived in South Vietnam at
the request of Diem.

On
3 February 1962, Diem formally launched the Strategic Hamlet Program by
presidential decree.Then, on 19 March
1962, Diem approved a systematic counter-insurgency plan based on the
recommendations of the BRIAM and U.S. advisors' security concepts, the Delta
Pacification Plan.The Delta Plan was
to be implemented in 10 provinces around Saigon.On 22 March 1962, Operation Sunrise began in the Binh Duong
Province around the Ben Cat area.

On
8 May 1962, a second“pacification”
operation, known as Operation Sea Swallow, began in the Phu Yen Province in
Central Vietnam, and was similar to Operation Sunrise in its objectives and
methods.The main objective of these
two operations was to “clear and hold” the areas.

According
to Thompson, Operations Sunrise and Sea Swallow were flawed. Instead of
launching the strategic hamlet program in densely populated and well-developed
areas around Saigon, Diem chose to launch Operation Sunrise in a sparsely
populated area that the Viet Cong solidly controlled.Operation Sunrise resettled all the inhabitants in the Ben Cat
area into four strategic hamlets away from their rice fields, “which gave the
impression that all strategic hamlets were going to be of this type.This action provided the Viet Cong with an
excellent propaganda line.” [35]Also, in order to hold the area, the
government had to deploy a large number of forces, forces that the Viet Cong
regularly ambushed along the highway from the province capital to the strategic
hamlets.The Viet Cong continually
attacked the four strategic hamlets around Ben Cat, until they finally came
under their control in 1964.As for
Operation Sea Swallow, Phu Yen “was not an important area and received undue
priority [an undue priority due to the lack of resources]…because the province
authorities were enthusiastic and it was considered undesirable not to take
advantage of this response.”[36]Diem summed up Operation Sea Swallow by
saying, “It makes the Americans happy, and it does not worry either me or the
Viet Cong.”[37]

In
addition to Thompson's criticism of the developing strategic hamlet program,
Roger Hilsman also criticized Diem's handling of the program.Hilsman suggested that the GVN had given the
strategic hamlet program high priority, but there was reliable evidence that,
“the program suffers seriously from inadequate direction, coordination, and
material assistance by the central government and from misunderstanding among
officials at the provincial and local levels.”[38]
Hilsman reported that the province chiefs were inclined to draw up unrealistic
high quotes in order to please the authorities in Saigon.Furthermore, the GVN provided insufficient
resources at the local level, which resulted in inadequately constructed and
weakly defended hamlets, in addition to undue financial burdens being levied on
the villagers.Also, the construction
of the hamlets had not followed any particular pattern or prioritized plan,
although, Diem indicated that priorities would be established after the merger
of the Delta Pacification plan and the strategic hamlet program.[39]

The government
built three different types of strategic hamlets, or defended hamlets, which
varied due to their degree of physical fortifications.In Vietnam, a strategic hamlet “represented
a fairly scattered hamlet, with possibly some regrouping of houses…[and may
have been] surrounded by a light fence, but this fence was only symbolic and
served a minor purpose from the defense point of view.”[40]
The defended hamlet was a “compact hamlet, with houses grouped closely together
and surrounded by a strong perimeter fence.”[41]The strategic and defended hamlets were
comparable to the Malayan kampongs and new villages during the Malayan
Emergency.The former represented a
strategic hamlet, while the latter a predominantly Chinese new village.In Malaya, the insurgents failed to
penetrate the Malay population; thus, the kampongs required little more than
the organization of home guard units supported by key police stations.The government could then concentrate on the
resettlement of Chinese squatters into new villages.In Vietnam, the insurgents had infiltrated all of the
countryside, “which meant that strategic hamlets, even in the reasonably secure
areas, needed more elaborate organization for their defen[s]e than Malaya[n]
kampongs, and…the defended hamlets required a considerable defensive
organization, more so than in the new villages in Malaya.” [42]

In
1963, the state of the Vietnamese police was equivalent to the Malayan police
force in 1948.They were not able to
deal with serious crimes, but only normal peacetime civil and criminal
offenses.The village police force in
Malaya had been increased seven fold, but in Vietnam, the task was left to the
army and the paramilitary popular force.There was a significant difference between a trained policeman and a
part-time villager in the popular force.[43]

Many
Viet Cong documents and North Vietnamese radio broadcasts expressed their sense
of urgency and concern about the program, and also gave suggestions on how to
combat the strategic hamlet program.Criticism of the strategic hamlet program was one of the principal
themes of North Vietnamese propaganda, until the flare-up of the Buddhist
crisis.Diem and Nhu's mismanagement of
the strategic hamlet program enabled the revolutionaries to be patient and
strike out when the opportunity arose.Thus, by mid-summer of 1963, due to the over extension of the strategic
hamlet program and eruption of the Buddhist crisis, the revolutionaries easily
overran a majority of the strategic hamlets and held them.

The
South Vietnamese government had hoped to complete 7,000 strategic hamlets by
the end of 1962 and 12,000 by the end of 1963.At the end of 1962, the government had completed 3,235 strategic
hamlets, which housed about thirty-four percent of the population, and by April
1963 they had built only 5,917 hamlets.[44]

The
strategic hamlet program progressed slowly because funding was inadequate.Unlike the subsequent new life hamletprogram, the strategic hamlet program did
not have large-scale U.S. financial support.[45]Even though the strategic hamlet program
experienced difficulties in the initial stages, the construction of strategic
hamlets increased, but too rapidly in respect to the availability of funds.

The
government built the strategic hamlets in such a reckless fashion that their
establishment did little to deter the Viet Cong.In fact, the over extended program left pockets of Viet Cong who
posed a constant threat in areas that should otherwise have been secure.[46]In contrast, by the end of the Malayan
Emergency the British had built about 600 solidly defended hamlets housing
approximately 500,000 people.

The use of the resettlement village helped defeat
the communists in Malaya, but fell well short of the desired goal in Vietnam.In Vietnam, the enemy was much larger than
that in Malaya.Furthermore, the
insurgents in Vietnam benefited from hundreds of miles of uncontrolled
frontiers.Moreover, during the period
of American involvement, North Vietnam gave material aid and moral support to
southern insurgents, who possessed the framework of an alternative
administration on both the civil and military sides that was by and large
organized in a more complete and disciplined manner than the South Vietnamese
Government.[47]During the French colonial period, an
efficient prefectural administration existed down to the provincial and
district levels, but, after their defeat in 1954, the seasoned cadre of French
administrators were withdrawn, which left no experienced Vietnamese ready to
replace them.Thus, the Diem regime had
to build its administration from the ground up.The majority of Diem's best administrators gained their
experience through collaboration with the French, or had come from the north,
and were, accordingly, easy targets for detraction.Diem's political position should have been a strong one, because
he was the ruler of an independent state.However, villages in Vietnam have always enjoyed a measure of autonomy
and were reluctant to embrace the GVN's political, economic, and social
revolution.In Malaya, great emphasis
was placed on the development of an efficient administration, including a
competent police force, down to the village level.

In Malaya, the
Chinese were easily discernable from the Malays and Indians, which allowed the
government to focus on one segment of the population.However, it must be noted that the guerrillas, were not always
physically distinguishable from the non-communists, because the majority of
guerrillas were Chinese who fought among almost wholly Chinese squatters and
villagers.“The only people in the
Chinese villages who were physically distinguishable from the guerrillas were
the handful of uniformed Malay policemen.”[48]Government forces in Vietnam did not have
one ethnic group on which they could focus; thus, it was harder to locate Viet
Cong guerrillas living among the population.Resettlement, in most cases, provided a better life for the Chinese
squatters.The squatters enjoyed new
urban amenities, such as schools and medical facilities.The “new villages” provided such a better
life that many of them remain intact today.In Vietnam, the government resettled people whose families had been
living on the same tracts of land for generations.Although new urban amenities were planned for the Vietnamese, the
villagers had to provide corvée labor to complete any of the planned projects,
which meant lost time in their fields.Rural Vietnamese preferred to be left alone, so that they could conduct
their lives as they always had.By
uprooting and resettling them, the South Vietnamese government caused greater
hardships for the rural Vietnamese, which increased anti-government
sentiment.

The two key
aspects of British success in Malaya were economics and politics; both posed
serious problems in Vietnam.One of the
most important factors in Britain's success in Malaya was the economic
prosperity Malaya achieved as a result of the Korean War.Malaya's tin and rubber industries grew
substantially during the early stages of the Korean War.The growth in these industries provided jobs
for the population.But even more
important was the fact that the additional revenue allowed the British-led
government to finance the resettlement program in its initial stages.In Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government
lacked the resources to properly fund the agroville and strategic hamlet
programs and forced the peasants themselves to pay for something they clearly
did not want.

Politically, the British guided the different
political parties in Malaya to independence. In Vietnam, the French, Diem, and
the U.S. did not allow the political participation of the insurgents.

In
closing I have to say that it is not easy to transplant one country's
successful program to another, and sometimes impossible, as was the case with
Malaya and Vietnam.

[18]
Trung Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Publishers, 1985), 62.In
his book Viet Cong Memoirs, Tang devoted an entire chapter to Major
Thao, whom he considered a close friend, and makes profound statements about
his actions to undermine the South Vietnamese Government.For Example, Tang states, “he [Thao]
personally changed the balance of political power between the Saigon government
and the NLF.He helped weaken Diem and
Nhu by assisting in the debacle of their rural-pacification schemes, and he was
a major figure…that undermined and eventually destroyed them." 62.

[23]
U.S. State Department, "President Diem's Comments on Agrovilles,” 1.

[24]
U.S. State Department, Foreign Service Despatch No. 149, Enclosure No. 1, from
the American Embassy in Saigon to The Department of State in Washington,
"Memorandum of Conversation 26 September 1960: Agrovilles, Internal
Security Situation in Vietnam, and Need for More Troops and Arms," October
7, 1960. 1.

[25]
U.S. State Department, "Memorandum of Conversation 26,” 1.

[26]
U.S. State Department, "Memorandum of Conversation 26,” 1.

[27]
U.S. State Department, "President Diem's Comments on Agrovilles,” 1.